Camping in the Canadian Rockies, An Account of Camp Life in the Wilder Parts of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Together with a Description of the Region About Banff, Lake Louise, and Glacier, and a Sketch of the Early Explorations

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1897. Hardcover. Very good. Second and preferred edition, with folding map. 25.5 cm, 283 pp. in original pictorial cloth boards, beautifully illustrated with 25 full-page photogravures and many additional illustrations in the text. Boards are lightly spotted, but still quite attractive; internally clean and sound. The topographical map, titled "Map of the Lake Louise Region Showing Part of the Summit Range of the Canadian Rocky Mountains" is laid in at the front and is in fine condition. The author was an early explorer of the Canadian Rockies who made several first ascents, including Temple, Aberdeen, Niblock, and Indefatigable. In a 1941 article in the American Alpine Journal, climber J. Henry Scattergood described the book as "delightful," praising Wilcox's "exquisite descriptions of Lake Louise, Valley of the Ten Peaks (then called by him Desolation Valley) and neighborhood." More recently, Zac Robinson and Stephen Slemon wrote in Alpinist magazine (No. 50, 2015) that "Camping in the Canadian Rockies became a North American bestseller. Referred to as "the first real guidebook for climbers and explorers of the Alberta and British Columbia peaks," it informed other works, such as A.P. Coleman's The Canadian Rockies, New and Old Trails. Both books stayed long in circulation, sources of inspiration for armchair adventurers who dreamed of the mountain West and for tourists who sought the "pristine" snows and forests of what the railway company began to call 'The Canadian Alps.'